This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Refuse vehicles play a key role in dispensing of refuse by traversing an area, stopping at a location where the user, resident, commercial business, or the like has deposited refuse for collection, depositing the refuse in the refuse vehicle, and transporting the refuse to a processing center, such as a recycling center, landfill, or incineration center. With a continuing need to reduce energy and emissions, there has been a trend towards designing and building lighter refuse vehicles. Lighter refuse vehicles are typically more limited in the payload that they can carry, but are more fuel efficient. This trend towards designing and building more economically operated vehicles has resulted in refuse vehicles having lighter components, and, consequently, lighter payload capacities. It is thus easier to overload contemporary refuse vehicles than their traditional counterparts.
In typical refuse collection operations, it is often difficult to estimate the weight of the refuse collected because of the many variables that determine the weight of the refuse. For example, the nature of the refuse itself can vary from collection to collection. Some refuse may be more dense resulting in more weight for a given volume when such refuse is added to the vehicle. Other refuse might be less dense resulting in less weight for a given volume when such refuse is added to the vehicle. Environmental conditions can cause the weight of a particular load to vary significantly. For example, if a load of refuse includes material which may absorb liquid, the weight of that load will vary depending on whether it is collected on a rainy or a dry day. Thus, vehicle operators cannot determine with certainty that a predetermined number of collections will result in maximizing the payload of the vehicle, without overloading the vehicle, prior to returning to the processing center to dump the collected refuse. It is generally desirable to not return to the processing center before the vehicle payload has been maximized. Because of this variability in load-to-load and to overall payload weights, vehicle operators presently have limited knowledge of the payload of the vehicle.
Further, operators are sometimes prone to push the limits of payload capacity. While pushing the payload capacity may have had less impact when utilizing traditional refuse vehicles, newer, more efficiently designed refuse vehicles are less tolerant of overload conditions and could damage the vehicle. Present refuse vehicles have no way of limiting further intake of refuse based upon weight. While in certain instances, the volume of the container portion of the refuse vehicle imposes limits, when moving particularly dense materials, it may be necessary to return to the processing center prior to the container becoming full.